


Convallaria Majalis

by DaifukuBun



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: AU, I'm not really sure how to tag this, M/M, boredom complex, hinata is confused: the fanfiction, severe anxiety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-08-20 01:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8231092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaifukuBun/pseuds/DaifukuBun
Summary: Totally normal, as far as apartments go. A little small, but it looks like Komaeda is the only one living here. If Hinata had to name one thing out of the ordinary, he’d say that Komaeda has a lot of books and shelves in his living room, or at least, a lot compared to the average person.





	1. The Train

“... Yup.”

“What.”

Nanami finishes her staring contest with the ceiling, returning to reality and levelling Hinata with a look that’s  _ probably  _ supposed to be serious, by Nanami standards. She tilts her head to the side, smiling a bit and looking like she’s talking about the weather. “What was the question?” 

Hinata feels his expression morph into exasperation, and he bites back a sigh. Normally he doesn’t mind the slow pace at which Nanami communicates. In fact, most of the time, he finds it quite relaxing, like she herself lives in a world that is a brief respite from reality. However, this time in particular, he kind of wants to find out what the hell she’s trying to say, as soon as possible. 

Because if he had heard right, then...

“I said,” Hinata starts, inhaling thin air. “You’re asking me to look after your  _ boss.  _ Your  _ superior in the work industry _ . For a month. A month, while you fly home and see your pet rabbit.”

Nanami blinks. “Yup.”

“What. What does that even mean?”

She shrugs, pursing her lips around the straw of her milkshake. “It means what it means.” she says through the plastic, and Hinata almost feels his eye twitch. Almost. 

“Is that even legal?”

“Yes.”

“How is that legal?”

Nanami seems to think for a second, her eyes migrating to the side. After a moment, she looks at Hinata once more. “I’m not sure.”

The chatter of the restaurant is incessant and it blends well with the empty cacophony that is currently Hinata’s thought process. He sort of tilts the side of his face into a sarcastic,  _ are you kidding me _ grin, staring Nanami in the face until she clarifies something. Until she says  _ anything  _ that makes sense. 

That moment never comes, so he decides to talk instead. 

“Then how do you know it’s legal?”

This time, Nanami answers rather quickly. “I was told to find someone to do the job while I was gone. That anyone would do, as long as they aren’t....” she pauses, and Hinata can almost see words rolling around in her head like dust bunnies. “... as long as they  _ are  _ reliable.” she finishes. The straw is between her fingers, now, and she pokes around in a cup that’s probably empty at this point. 

The words leave his mouth almost immediately. 

“You think I’m reliable?” he says, blinking quite abruptly. Perhaps it’s a little warm, he’s definitely not flattered or anything. No way. 

She smiles, then. Her eyes are sleepy as always but they still work nicely with her relaxed demeanor. “Mmhm.” 

Maybe he’s blushing. Maybe a little bit. No one had ever said something like that before, and he’s never considered himself reliable before, never really considered himself anything before. Maybe he’s, maybe…

“Reliable enough to handle this, probably.”

“Oh.”

Any traces of leftover flattery are gone now, and so he sighs through his nose, resting his chin atop his palm. Nanami still wears that sleepy, carefree expression of hers. She certainly doesn’t ask for things very often, so he knows that he really should consider this. Hinata rolls the thought around in his head for a while, crossing his ankles beneath the table. 

“And you’re  _ sure  _ it’s legal.”

She nods, and when she does, her pearl-colored hair bounces with the movement. “Definitely. Just… think of it like a favor. That’s all it is, really.”

Beneath the table, Hinata’s shoes scuff together. “I haven’t agreed yet.”

At this, Nanami sighs. She leans forward, moving from side to side as she adjusts herself in a plastic seat. Every other fast food chain in town had been given a more… comfortable renovation, but Nanami had always insisted on this place, claiming it was “retro”. To Hinata, it just smells a bit like mildew. 

“It’s not even a…” Nanami pauses, and Hinata wonders why. The air smells like grease too, he realizes, now that he’s been here a while. “... job.” 

Hinata blinks. “What?”

“You’ll get paid.” she assures, quickly by her standards. 

“Then… it’s a job.” Hinata says, slow. Nanami shakes her head. 

“No, it’s…” her head tilts. “Hmmm.” 

A beat of silence passes between them, broken when someone bumps into the back of Hinata’s chair and makes him sputter out an articulate, “Um.”

“I guess, if I had to describe it,” Nanami starts after the disruption, “it’d be like a… personal assistant position. But, it’s not quite that.”

Hinata nods. 

“Because, I know him personally, sort of.” she says. “I knew him in high school.”

“So, you run errands for this guy.”

Nanami stares at the table, contemplating. The door opens a ways away and a little bell chimes throughout the building. “Sort of.”

It’s quiet for a beat, before Nanami decides to continue. 

“You’d have to go grocery shopping and do some cleaning. That’s it.” she says, tilting her head to the side. “Maybe an odd errand or two, yeah. But... he’s pretty insistent on wanting to do most things by himself.”

At this, Hinata scoffs. A sudden rush of smoke or steam leaves the kitchen of the small establishment, but whatever it had been, no one pays it any mind. “I don’t really think he likes to do chores by himself if he has to hire someone for it.” 

Nanami pauses, an odd look crossing her face for a small moment. Then, she yawns, long and drawn out. 

“His reasons are his reasons.” she says, half in the middle of her yawn. She pats her lips together afterward, animated in the strangest of ways. “Um… oh, will you do it?”

Hinata looks at the grains in the table as if they’re fascinating. He chews on his cheek in thought, before sighing and knocking the floor with his heel. “I’ll look at my schedule.” he mutters eventually, even though he knows  _ damn well  _ he’s free for… pretty much the rest of his life, if he doesn’t get himself out of whatever cycle of moping he’s in at the moment.  _ It’s one job, quit, then the next, and the next, and school  _ definitely  _ isn’t worth it.  _

Nanami is kind of like a burnt out fairy light. She slowly lights into a calm smile, and Hinata, every so often, is glad that she’s his friend. Best friend, maybe. He doesn’t really know. Yet, he can’t help but be slightly fearful of her, when after a feature length pause, she says, “Don’t let him get to you.”

 

*

 

_ ‘What do you mean don’t let him get to me??’ _

Hinata fidgets on the train, uncomfortable because one, he’s going to meet a complete stranger who’s apparently capable of  _ getting to him _ , whatever that means, and two, because there’s something sticky on the bottom of his shoes, probably from the train. Anyway, he can’t relax, and for some weird, pointless reason he had waited until  _ now  _ to ask Nanami to clarify.

Though, the world’s kindness is not utterly lost on him, it seems, as his phone vibrates just seconds later.  _ ‘He’s kind of weird sometimes.’  _

Hinata suppresses the urge to huff, because there are other people on this train with him. 

_ ‘What does that mean????’ _

He thinks that as time goes on, he’ll only add more question marks to his messages to Nanami. 

_ ‘He’s a good person.’ _

Hinata quirks an eyebrow, shifting in his seat. The straps above him swing as the train stops and the doors slide open, letting in a horde of high school students. He has to wait for a little while until he’s meant to get off, and so he subconsciously makes himself smaller as more and more students flood the train. 

… He’s scheduled to go to this guy’s house, every day, at the exact hour most high schools release their students. Weekends will be a godsend. For a moment he wonders how Nanami stands it, before he thinks to himself that she’s probably too absorbed in some handheld game every time to notice and/or care. 

His phone vibrates again. Hinata blinks and holds the screen where he can see it.

_ ‘Probably.’ _

 

*

 

_ I got this. I got this. I totally got this. _

The hallway of the apartment complex is filled to the brim with potted plants, and it smells like old ladies. Still, Hinata soldiers on. He stops in front of the door number Nanami had told him, and turns to it in a way that’s rather mechanical. 

He heaves in a breath and holds up his hand, balling it into a fist. After a short few seconds, he means to knock on the door three succinct, quiet times (Nanami had told him that the guy doesn’t like loud noises), but instead, he sort of  _ punches  _ it because of his nerves. Hinata then coughs nervously, straightening his tie. 

_ I got this.  _

There’s a creak from inside the apartment and he thinks he may have heard a  _ coming,  _ but he’s not quite sure. 

_ There’s no way I’ll get fired this time.  _

_ I mean, this isn’t even a job. _

_ It’s a favor. Except, not really. I’m getting paid. _

_ All I have to do, is not let this guy get to me. _

_ … Whatever that means. _

The door opens inward toward the apartment, and at that moment he’s faced with a yawn that immediately reminds him of Nanami. 

           He's not entirely sure what he had been expecting, but nonetheless he finds himself burdened with an odd sense of surprise. Maybe an old man with a wrinkled face, or at least a middle-aged one in fancy clothes. Like, the sort of people who pay other people to go grocery shopping for them. Needless to say he’s a little caught off guard when he finds someone who looks to be about his age on the other side of the door. 

Hinata then remembers what Nanami had said,  _ I knew him in high school,  _ and for a split second he feels like quite the idiot. 

“Hello?” says the guy after his yawn, and Hinata abandons that cycle of thought. It didn’t matter, anyway. 

“Hey.” he says in return. The guy had been looking a little to the left with half-lidded eyes, but now that Hinata has spoken, he seems to focus his attention forward. Maybe he should have said  _ hello _ instead of  _ hey _ , this guy,  _ boy _ is going to be paying him, after all, but when faced with someone the same age as him who just let out a massive, unflattering yawn, he can’t help but lose all sense of formality. 

_ Did I know him in high school? _

_ Probably not, Nanami was in a different class. _

For a while they stand beneath a thick blanket of silence, but this is broken when the guy on the other side of the doorway clears his throat. Hinata furrows his eyebrows. “I’m here instead of Nanami.” he says, a little confused. Is he early? Is this the right apartment? 

At this the guy seems to light up a bit. Muscles that Hinata hadn’t realized were tense relax when the guy turns his back to him, waving his hand a bit and saying a quipped  _ come in.  _

Silently, Hinata sighs beneath the doorway.  _ Don’t let him get to you, don’t let him get to you,  _ is the chant circling his mind, but when he looks at the guy, he doesn’t feel very threatened. Maybe Nanami had been joking. The guy is wearing a fluffy sweater, for god’s sake. 

With a roll of his shoulders, Hinata enters the apartment.

 

*

 

“That really is strange. But if it’s Nanami-san, I don’t think there’s any reason to worry.” 

“Right?” Hinata says, eyes scanning a bookshelf across the living room. The guy, who he had just learned was called Komaeda, nods, his hair kind of bouncing with the air as it does so. It kind of looks like it’s floating, like a cloud or something. Personally, Hinata thinks he looks a little weird, but he’s not about to say as much. “Her head’s in the clouds. She probably just forgot.”

The sofa he’s sitting on is soft, but it’s made of scratchy material and he can’t find a comfortable way to sit. With another quiet sigh Hinata eases himself into the corner of the sofa, listening to the sound of Komaeda’s fingers clacking away at the keyboard of a laptop. 

Inside the apartment itself it smells of laundry detergent rather than the old dust in the hallway, and so for that he’s grateful. There’s a clock ticking somewhere, too, and a framed picture of a golden retriever on the wall. 

Totally normal, as far as apartments go. A little small, but it looks like Komaeda is the only one living here. If Hinata had to name one thing out of the ordinary, he’d say that Komaeda has a lot of books and shelves in his living room, or at least, a lot compared to the average person. 

The fabric of the sofa scratches into Hinata’s arm, and Komaeda pauses typing for a moment. Afraid that he’s going to have to make conversation, Hinata stills, but furrows his eyebrows when nothing happens and the typing resumes. 

_ He seems harmless.  _

A whirr, and Hinata looks to his right to see a wireless printer spitting out a piece of paper. The typing stops at around the same time, and in his peripheral vision he sees a puff of white streak across the room; Komaeda wheeling toward the printer in an office chair. A pale hand reaches out to take the paper from the printer, and Hinata finds himself thinking  _ man, this guy is skin and bones,  _ before that very paper is in his hands and Komaeda is regarding him with a small smile that befits his face just a little too well. 

_ Bread, eggs, batteries…  _ A shopping list. Hinata looks up to see the other boy’s eyes closed in a smile that has suddenly become bigger than it was before. “Anytime today is fine.” he says, and Hinata thinks that his voice sounds a little unhealthy. Like… like he has a cold, or something. 

Later, he’ll ask Nanami if he had been coming down with anything before she left. 

Komaeda stands, his eyes still shut, and Hinata looks down at the list once more.  _ Totally normal.  _

“What kind of bread?”

“Surprise me.” 

Footsteps disappear into the other room and Hinata supposes that Komaeda has gone to get the money for the groceries, plus, hopefully, whatever he’s being paid.

He returns only a few seconds later, and at that point Hinata has folded the list and stuffed it into his pocket. 

_ This shouldn't be too much, probably like, 4000 yen at most-- _

__ “Feel free to get anything you want for yourself, too.” 

Hinata looks up to see Komaeda wearing a smile so bright his eyes are closed. He's holding a thin, shining piece of plastic between his middle and index finger, and after looking at it for a moment Hinata realizes that it's a  _ credit card _ . Komaeda opens his eyes halfway, dropping the card on an end table, quelling his smile and leaving the room with just a few quiet footsteps. 

At the time, Hinata doesn’t really feel like he can afford to pay it any mind. He pockets the card and stands, giving the apartment another once-over (just to make sure it’s  _ completely  _ normal), before leaving through the door he came. 

 

*

 

_ ‘I don’t know either. Just get whatever.’ _

Hinata looks from his phone to a shelf filled with every kind of battery there is. He squints his eyes at the message to ensure that he had read it right, before glancing back at the batteries. 

_ ‘Seriously?’ _ he sends. Maybe he’s misunderstanding the situation. Nanami should know what kinds of batteries Komaeda needs, assuming this is a normal occurrence. One doesn’t just buy  _ whatever  _ kind of battery, electronics don’t work like that. 

_ ‘Yup. I gotta go, the train is boarding.’  _

One suppressed sigh later, he’s sliding a card that most definitely isn’t his through a reader. He feels a little nervous doing so, because he’s  _ pretty  _ sure that this is illegal, but he’s also pretty confident that no one is going to bother verifying a guy with four different kinds of batteries and seven different kinds of bread in his cart. 

“That’s a lot of bread.” remarks the cashier. 

“It sure is.” Hinata deadpans, rubbing at his eyes.

 

*

 

The train comes to a sudden stop and Hinata sways to the left, holding onto a ceiling strap with one hand and three grocery bags with the other. 

“That’s a lot of bread.”

Experiencing mild deja vu, he looks over his shoulder toward the voice, meeting eyes with a boy in a high school uniform. Hinata blinks. The high schools all got out hours ago, so what’s this kid doing here? 

“It sure is.” he decides to say, going back to looking at nothing. A few seconds pass, and after just a few more, the boy behind him sneezes. At that exact moment the train starts to move again, and it’s a little funny how the sneeze seemed to signal departure. 

The card in his pocket kind of feels like it’s burning a hole into his jeans. He doesn’t feel guilty for doing something illegal or anything, just a little uncomfortable. The situation is strange enough that Hinata finds his thoughts out of order, but it’s not quite so abnormal that he’ll tell someone about it the next chance he gets. 

An odd job, that’s all. Go grocery shopping for a guy who’s only  _ slightly  _ weird. There are worse options, surely. He’s doing a favor for Nanami, too, which is always nice. He’s just about to launch into the thought process of what a great person and friend Nanami is before the lights in the train cut off and heavy, metal screeching erupts from behind him. He turns and for a very split second shares terrified eye contact with the high school boy from earlier as, out the window, sparks rain down from everywhere and the train derails, sending the inside into chaos.  


	2. The Job

“Well.” says the high school boy, his breath ragged and his eyes wide. He's holding onto a train seat for dear life, staring out the window pointing toward the sky and trying to adjust to the awkward angle. “That could have been a lot worse.”

Hinata lessens his grip on the ceiling strap, stumbling on the diagonal floor and bending down to retrieve the bags he had dropped. The boy is leveling him with a friendly, meek smile. Hinata nods, not sure how to respond.

They had only been off the tracks for a moment, before some other part of the train had been stopped by a particularly sturdy lamppost. The boy is right in that it could have been a lot worse, but Hinata still finds himself vaguely worried about the passengers elsewhere in the train. 

“We'll have to wait for the doors to be manually opened.” Hinata says, mostly to himself. The other passengers in their car are trying their best to pry open the door, and he eyes them knowingly. The boy looks at them, too, climbing and sliding in the train car.

“How do you know that?”

Hinata blinks. He hadn't noticed, but in the duration of the crash his palms had produced a lot of sweat. His grip on the grocery bags tightens. 

“I've been a train technician before.” he airs, dry. The boy looks at him dumbly for a moment before letting out an articulate  _ oh _ .

The passengers continue to squabble, and so Hinata does nothing more than slide down to one of the skewed train seats, sitting down and resting the back of his head on the window. It feels odd at this angle, like he's lying on the ground with his legs up. The boy follows him for whatever reason, and setting the grocery bags on his lap, Hinata decides to just ignore him for the time being. 

That doesn't work out very well.

“I'm Naegi Makoto.” The boy says. Hinata slides his gaze to the side, quirking one eyebrow. The boy is staring at the other panicked passengers, whatever expression he's wearing facing the other way. Hinata looks forward again.  _ I didn't ask, but okay.  _

“Nice to meet you.” Hinata says. Some muffled sounds are coming from the outside, but he doesn't pay them any mind. 

“Yeah…” the boy, Naegi, murmurs, facing Hinata again. He's got big, bright eyes. Like a puppy. 

A moment passes. 

“I'm Hinata Hajime.” he decides to say at last, sighing in his head. He can't even guess how long they're going to be stuck here; the emergency exits are plastered onto the ground. Naegi lets out a bright smile, and Hinata returns it, though his is a little more subdued. The bags crinkle atop his legs. 

 

*

 

“This is a lot of bread.” Komaeda says, all seven loaves in his hands,  _ somehow.  _

In his mind, Hinata laughs. “It sure is.” he says, crossing his arms and leaning against the small counter of the kitchenette. 

_ Do I tell him I got in a train crash, or… oh, right, ask if he needs anything else. Right. _

“Do you need anything else?” Hinata says, sounding a bit more monotonous than he had meant to. Komaeda opens a small cabinet with his foot and crouches down, all of the bread still in his hands,  _ somehow.  _ He shakes his head, hair flouncing around in the air like some kind of infomercial mattress. Then, he sets the first loaf in the cabinet. 

Hinata thinks he hears him murmur a quiet  _ no, that's all,  _ before Komaeda stands to his full height again, now with six loaves. 

“I heard that a train derailed downtown.” he says. Hinata can sort of tell that Komaeda is just trying to make conversation, but nonetheless, he can't help but flinch at the mention. 

Luckily, Komaeda doesn't seem to notice. Hinata has an odd feeling that he shouldn't tell the other  _ yeah, I was totally there _ . It feels a bit like a sinking suspicion, and so he decides to… bend the truth. 

Although, he's curious at his own actions.

“Yeah.” he says, simple. “I was nearby, but it wasn't so bad. The only injuries were minor.” 

Komaeda regards him for a split second, smiling lightly and opening another cabinet, this one a little higher. “Hmm, that's good to hear.” he hums, putting the second loaf of bread into  _ that _ cabinet. Hinata opens his mouth to reply, but Komaeda continues. “It's a relief that you weren't involved, Hinata-kun.” 

“... Right.”

 

*

  
  


_“It was the weirdest goddamn thing, man!”_ Hinata’s phone gripes in his ear and he holds it a short distance away, cringing visibly and waiting for silence. _“... Hinata? Dude?”_

“I'm here.” he says, a sigh clear in his voice. Souda either doesn't notice, or doesn't care. “What was so weird about it?”

_“There was nothing wrong with the tracks, and nothing wrong with the train, either. It's like the damn thing just jumped off the rails!”_ Souda exclaims. Hinata scratches his head, lying down and staring at the cycle of his ceiling fan. Television yammers on in the background, but he doesn't pay it any mind. Souda is louder, anyway. _“And that pole, too.”_ he continues, and in his mind Hinata is making patterns out of the ceiling. _“Who ever heard of a_ train _ getting stopped by a little _ pole _?” _

“It seems impossible.” Hinata offers. “But it definitely happened. You can't call it anything other than a freak accident.” 

_“Right, right! But even freak accidents happen for a reason!”_ Souda insists, and with the thirteenth rotation of the fan, Hinata feels himself growing tired. He blinks slowly and, after a moment, shuts his eyes. With a yawn, he puts his phone on speaker and sets it to the side. _“Was there anyone suspicious on the train?”_

“Not that I noticed.” Hinata says to the darkness behind his eyelids. 

_ “Maybe someone hijacked the conductor!” _

Hinata pries one eye open, squinting in befuddlement. He turns his head toward the phone out of habit. _“_ And did what? Made the train hop off the tracks? You're a mechanic, Souda. Get it together.”

_ “Well-- I mean, y’know!” _

“What?” Hinata shuts his eyes again. A hint of a smile quirks the corners of his mouth, but in such a minuscule way that, really, he can't deem Souda’s squabbling on the other end of the call a victory. 

_ “You never know, you know!” _

“You sound like that guy with the big hair who tries to tell people’s fortunes behind the pizza place.” 

That gets a laugh out of Souda, and for this Hinata is grateful. It means that Souda might stop using his  _ serious voice _ , which, bless the poor guy’s soul, sounds like nothing more than a terrified, out-of-breath preteen. 

Right on the money, Souda sounds more like himself. _“Dude, that guy is cool. He predicted that I'd find a five yen coin in a dumpster, and he_ got it right _. ” _

Hinata isn't even going to mention all the things wrong with that statement. “ Fascinating. ” he deadpans.

_“Right? Anyway, I wanna find out what happened on that train. It's gotta be some kinda sabotage.”_ Souda continues, and behind closed lids, Hinata rolls his eyes. 

After a bit of silence, Souda does something he rarely ever does. He takes the hint. 

_ “Dude, are you sleeping or something?” _

In response, Hinata lets out a loud, exaggerated, fake snore. Souda makes a weird sound, before snickering. 

_“Okay, okay.”_ he says from the other end of the phone, and Hinata, honestly quite sleepy for the first time in a while (train crashes tend to do that), rolls over and ends the phone call with an overdone smack. 

 

*

 

“I hate to ask this of you, Hinata-kun, but I couldn't see any other way around it!” Komaeda gushes as Hinata is whipped in the face with cold water. 

“It's fine!” Hinata exclaims, wiping away the water with the shoulder of his sleeve. “It's fine,” he says again in an attempt to be reassuring. “Just give me the screwdriver.”

Komaeda laughs in a way that's clearly self-conscious and hands him the screwdriver, stepping out of the shower. Hinata hadn't thought that this job would entail plumbing, but he's not really going to complain, since he  _ kind of _ knows what he's doing. It's just a loose showerhead, anyway. Why Komaeda couldn't fix it himself or why he didn't call an  _ actual plumber _ , Hinata can only guess. 

Although, he's not going to complain, as long as it comes with a paycheck. 

Water spikes prematurely out of the pipe before it can even reach the spray section. “First thing's first,” Hinata says. “You gotta turn it off.” He twists the nozzle until the water stops, and through the corner of his eye he can see that Komaeda wears an unreadable expression. He looks his way, waiting for a nod or something, but all the boy does is stand still, wringing his hands together. Hinata sighs and turns back to the shower. “Then, all you have to do is tighten these screws. It seals the gap between the pipe and the sprinkler.” 

“Screws?”

Hinata blinks. He looks again at Komaeda, who has his eyebrows furrowed and his gaze pointing near the shower head. 

“Yeah.” finds its way out of his mouth, and he puts the tip of his finger atop one of the aforementioned screws. “These ones.”  _ The only screws on the entire thing.  _

After a brief pause, Komaeda nods. He directs his gaze to the tile floor of the bathroom for a while, before looking up and smiling a closed-eye smile. “Thank you, Hinata-kun.”

“Don't mention it.” he replies automatically, a little caught off guard from the switch in the other's demeanor. Without much of a thought, Hinata steps out of the shower and places the screwdriver near the sink. Komaeda follows him out of the bathroom, much like a stray dog, or an annoying poltergeist. 

 

*

 

_ “It was like that for weeks, I’m glad he got it fixed.” _

Hinata allows his gaze to follow the steam from a cup of noodles into the air, frowning and speaking into the phone receiver.

“Seriously?”

_ “Yeah. I offered to fix it for him, but he refused every time. He said he was perfectly fine bathing from the sink.” _

Wondering whether it’s been three minutes since he poured the water into the cup, Hinata sits up, resting his free arm on the low table. He crosses his legs, dragging denim across the carpet. 

To that, Hinata doesn’t say anything, because for some reason it doesn’t feel quite right to reply  _ man, what a weirdo.  _

Nanami sighs, and there’s a creak on the other end, like she’s walking up some stairs.  _ “Anyways,” _ she says, and Hinata realizes that the cup had stopped steaming.  _ “We lost Usami. I can’t find her anywhere.”  _

“Did you check the basement?”

_ “I’m doing that right now.” _

 

*

 

“Hi!” 

Hinata feels his heart leap into his throat, and he whips his head around to see… nothing, but the rest of the train. He furrows his eyebrows, confused, before below him he hears someone clear their throat. Looking down a little, he finds the high school kid from before, the one who was in the crash with him. 

Naegi looks  _ up  _ at Hinata with a bit of a sheepish expression, laughing a moment after that. The train turns, and they both sway. “Come on, I’m not  _ that  _ short.”

Getting over his shock, Hinata offers an apologetic smile. “I never said you were.”  _ I wasn’t even thinking it.  _ Now that he looks at him, Hinata realizes that he’s probably about… half a head taller than Naegi. For a moment he wonders how he hadn’t seen him, before shaking his head looking out the moving window. Things have been bizarre, lately. Just add that to the pile. 

“But I bet you were thinking it!”

“No, not at all.”

“Really?”

Hinata blinks. “... Really.”

“That’s a relief. Usually that’s the first thing people say to me.” he says, simpering and glancing at the floor for a second. “But I just wanted to say, I’m glad you still take this train.”

Naegi smiles, then, and Hinata realizes somewhere in the back of his head that he doesn’t see people smile very often. Maybe Nanami on occasion, but that’s it, really.  Weird, though he can’t say he’s surprised.

“What?” he airs, registering what Naegi had said just a little late. The boy brightens his smile, adjusting the messenger bag around his shoulder.  _ Oh, that’s-- _

“I mean, after the crash and everything. I take this train every day on my way home, and a lot of the people who took this route every day up until last week aren’t here anymore.” Hinata eyes the bag, and then he sees the crest on the boy’s jacket.  _ Haha, what a coincidence.  _ “So, it’s just good to see that you’re doing okay.”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Hinata puts on another smile.  _ And I’ll be here just about every day for a month.  _

“Things like this, they just happen.” Naegi continues, and Hinata nods. He’s not sure how to bring up the school bag, or whether he’s even capable of that kind of small talk, and so he just nods along to whatever the boy wants to say. “I mean, it’s not the train’s fault or the track’s fault. I think it’d be unfair to not take this train anymore after one little accident, but I can’t blame the people for being afraid, either.”

“It’s unfair to who?”

“The train!”

“It’s unfair to the train.” Hinata repeats, feeling his expression falling not out of irritation, but out of a feeling that utters the word  _ seriously.  _

“Yeah.” Naegi nods. “I mean, it’s just luck. In my experience it’s no one’s fault what luck decides to do.”

“I don’t think it’s possible for a train to be at fault for something.” 

Speaking of the train, it screeches to a halt, and Naegi puts two hands instead of one on the hanging strap. “You know what I mean.” he says with the same smile. “I don’t really know what I’m saying anymore. Basically, I’m just glad you’re doing okay.”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine.” Hinata says, looking out the window again. When he thinks back to his time in high school, he realizes that his attitude is nothing like that of Naegi. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone retain such optimism while being a high schooler. To be honest, he thought it impossible. “But, uh.”

Naegi looks up, tilting his head to the side like a small dog. “Hm?”

“That bag…” 

The boy blinks, turning his attention to the bag. “This?”

“Yeah. Isn’t it from Hope’s Peak?”

All of a sudden, Naegi’s eyes turn bright. “Oh, yeah! How’d you know?”

Hinata hadn’t noticed before, since, evidently, the school had gotten a uniform change. He remembers being surrounded by people in weak beiges and pastels, but when he looks at the clothes Naegi is wearing, all he sees is a black suit-jacket with a tiny, tiny emblem of the school near the right shoulder. Personally, he thinks it’s a change for the better. “That’s where I went to high school. I recognized the symbol, is all.”

“Ohh.” Naegi nods, his eyes shut beneath his smile. “It’s a great school, huh?”

Hinata pauses for a moment, watching lines of trees race past outside the window. There’s street vendors and drink machines, and even some people walking their dogs. “Yeah.” he says after a moment, because he’s not really sure what else he  _ could  _ say. 

 

*

 

_ Maybe it’s best not to ask weird people why they’re weird. _

“There!” Komaeda announces to the wall, turning to Hinata in a perfect arc of 180. “Does it look gone to you?” 

Hinata glances at the counter of the kitchenette, biting the inside of his cheek. There had been a stain on the surface, and Komaeda had spent the last… ten minutes, probably, scrubbing away at it. 

“Yeah, I don’t see anything.” 

Nanami had said that he’d have to do some cleaning. Earlier he had dreaded such a thing, since cleaning wasn’t exactly his favorite (because he never had to do it, somehow all of his belongings ended up back in their rightful places), but now he yearns for it. Cleaning after another person would be much preferred to  _ watching  _ that person clean, and then  _ evaluating how well they did.  _ It’s not that he’s particularly stressed; quite the opposite, actually. It’s just, everything about this, and now that he thinks of it, Komaeda in general, screams  _ awkward _ .

Hinata watches with a lanky, pasted smile as Komaeda throws a fist into the air, probably some form of a tiny cheer. He then migrates over to the sink, setting about washing the dishes.  _ God, this is so weird,  _ Hinata hears himself think, before Komaeda’s voice breaks him out of his own head.

“You can do what you want now, Hinata-kun. Sorry to ask something so weird of you.” 

_ At least he acknowledges that it’s weird.  _ “It’s fine. Do you want me to go home, or…?”

Komaeda pauses, and Hinata sees his shoulders relax before he tenses them again, grabbing a sponge. “Ah, no, actually…” he drones, clinking a dish. Hinata assumes that Komaeda is just thinking, something that, in the past week or so, he's learned that the other does  _a lot._

Since the kitchen is connected to the living room, Hinata allows himself to gravitate toward the couch. He remembers thinking that the fabric had been scratchy his first day of coming to Komaeda’s apartment, but now he finds it pretty comfortable in a way that reminds him of the rickety bed he’s had his entire life. He sits, waiting for his next, uh, task? Whatever. 

After about five minutes of silence accompanied by the clamor of dishes, though, he starts to furrow his eyebrows and looks toward Komaeda. This happens just as the faucet stops, and, a little concerned, Hinata listens to the sound of the sink knob squeaking. 

“Hinata-kun?”

“Yeah?” he blurts, jumping. For some reason, the air feels heavy. That is, before Komaeda turns around and smiles a small smile. 

“Sorry for scaring you. I thought you might have left.”

“Uh, no.” Hinata says, scratching at the back of his neck. “You said there was more for me to do, so…”

There’s an odd, drawn out second in which Komaeda stares at nothing, before he smiles wider, hits his left palm with his right fist, and bolts out of the room, ambling into his bedroom like a child. Hinata stares after him, perplexed in several different ways. He listens to him rummage around for a bit, before there’s a concerning  _ bang  _ and, with a jolt of his stomach, Hinata follows after him.

“Are you okay…?” he starts to say, before pausing in the doorway. Komaeda stands, wobbling just a little bit, holding an insurmountable amount of DVD’s in his arms. 

“Fine, I just hit my head...” he says, sounding out of breath, although Hinata can’t fathom why he would be. Not only that, but it’s quite unsettling to hear someone’s voice when their face is hidden behind a pile of DVD’s… that sounds awfully specific, but it’s true. “More importantly,” Komaeda says, dropping a few of the cases to the ground. “Let’s watch a movie!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gosh!


	3. The Panic

_ ‘Nanami help he’s drooling on me.’ _

The clock on the apartment wall is ticking incessantly and the TV is yammering on at an oddly quiet volume. Hinata’s arm is  _ horribly  _ asleep, crushed into the side of the couch, and Komaeda is snoring softly into the shoulder on his other side. He’s holding his phone with a hand that’s partially numb, craning his eyes toward it so as to not wake Komaeda up.

His phone decides to buzz the next moment, and he looks down to see a reply from Nanami.  _ ‘Yeah, he does that.’ _

The screen dims as Hinata glares at it dryly, before Nanami sends another message. 

_ ‘Wait, what do you mean?’  _

Accompanied by the rolling panic in his head, Hinata’s thumbs type at a speed that’s almost superhuman. 

_ ‘He said he wanted to watch a movie which was pretty weird but I mean whatever he seems lonely so I just went along with it but he ended up fallign asleep on my shoulder and now I can’t move and I kind of have to pee.’  _

After sending the message, he stares at the TV with wide eyes, not really registering what’s going on onscreen. 

_ ‘You must be pretty panicked, there was a typo there and no punctuation…’ _

Komaeda mumbles something in his sleep, turning his head a little. Normally, Hinata wouldn’t be so freaked out at this kind of thing. It’s just… there is actual drool bleeding through his shirt, and he really, seriously has to pee. Also, Komaeda’s hair goes  _ everywhere.  _ He’s pretty sure he got some in his mouth at some point, somehow, and it’s really grossing him out. 

He continues to read the text from Nanami, swallowing some tepid air. 

_ ‘... Just wake him up. It might be a little embarrassing but he won’t freak out or anything.’  _

Hinata presses his lips together, steadying his breath. He moves his shoulder a bit, but Komaeda doesn’t stir. Then, his phone vibrates again. 

_ ‘Probably.’  _

God damn it, Nanami. 

 

*

 

Maybe he’s the weird one? Often Hinata wonders why every person who finds their way into his life has some kind of odd quirk. Perhaps it’s weird of  _ him  _ to  _ not  _ have one. Maybe it’s part of being an expressive person, he thinks. If he didn’t have so much trouble being himself, whoever  _ himself  _ was, he’d have one, too. 

He sits on a bench, looking at Souda sidelong as he whispers something like  _ there, that one’s really hot! _ , and of course, as his friend is whispering about girls, Hinata is in his head having an existential argument. With a popsicle in his hand. 

It tastes like syrup and nothing else. 

“There’s a girl selling crepes over there.” Souda points to a skewed corner of the park shaded by a particularly large tree, wherein there's a decrepit truck selling, who would have guessed it, crepes. 

Hinata quirks one eyebrow. He then listens to the odd sound Souda makes when his own popsicle starts to melt, and part of the syrup lands on his jeans. 

“... What about them?” Hinata says, staring at the truck in the distance. A little kid stands on the tips of their toes to point at the menu, and the girl in the truck nods, her smile visible even in the distance. 

“No, not the crepes.” Souda says, elbowing him in the side.  _ “Not the crepes, Hinata.”  _

After taking just a moment to register what Souda had meant, Hinata rolls his eyes and bites the last bit of his popsicle off its stick. To his credit, the girl running the truck  _ is  _ very pretty, from what he can tell. She's got long blonde hair and a kind smile; but that's beside the point, Souda has started to babble again. 

“I've always wanted to date a blonde.” he says, kind of hushed, and Hinata yawns before looking at the side of his friend's face. “Isn't she  _ beautiful _ ?” 

There are legitimate sparkles in his eyes. Hinata wants to say something clever and maybe a little bit biting, but he can't think of anything, so he just stares at his pink-haired friend as if he had forgotten how to write his own name. 

Souda lets out a tiny giggle, and Hinata realizes then that his friend has condemned himself to a life of pining hell. 

“I'm gonna go talk to her.” 

“I don't think that's a good idea.” Hinata says, playing with the tiny wooden stick between his fingers. “I mean, don't  _ talk to her _ straight away. Get to know her first, or something.”

“ _ Duh,  _ that's what I'm doing.”

Hinata sighs.

 

*

 

In the end, Souda had gotten nothing out of the exchange, but a crepe for its full price. 

“This tastes awesome.” he says, trying to hide the fact that he’s actually really upset, and maybe about to cry. Hinata shakes his head and smiles a fond, succinct smile where the other can’t see.

“Anyway,” Souda manages in front of a sniffle, “it was just over here, to the right.”

“I know, Souda. I was there.”

“Oh, yeah.”

And so here they are, in the middle of a busy intersection, standing an arm’s length away from a set of familiar, pristine train tracks. “See, I can’t see anything wrong with ‘em.” Souda goes on, and Hinata, despite himself, squints at the tracks, too. “In fact, they’re almost weirdly clean. And I worked on the train myself- there wasn’t even any sign that it had left the tracks.”

He stops, then, to lick some whipped cream off his top lip. 

The sun glints off the stainless tracks as though it’s  _ meant _ to be blinding. “So I thought, hey, bring genius Hinata and he’ll figure something out! Aren’t I a nice friend?”

“Yeah, Souda. Sure.”

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I already told you.” Hinata looks away from the tracks, facing Souda and twisting his face into something perplexed. “It was just a freak accident,  _ and, _ ” he pauses, folding his arms. “I’m not a genius, where’d you get that idea? Don’t call me that.”

“You got into the best college in the country and quit after a week because you were  _ bored.” _

Hinata blinks, then shrugs, letting his arms drop to his sides with a quiet sound. “That doesn’t make me a genius. In this kind of society, it just makes me a lucky person.”

“Dude, you probably could have gone to school  _ out  _ of the country. I’m being serious here, you’re really smart.”

The gates lower over the train tracks and Hinata watches them, backing away a safe distance. He can hear horns and bells chiming a ways away, and before either one of them have noticed, a crowd has gathered at their backs, waiting for a path. The train races past before he realizes that it’s gotten that close.

 

*

 

“You still use a flip phone?” Hinata blurts, before refraining from slapping a hand over his mouth. 

Komaeda looks up from where he is- sitting on the couch with his knees to his chest, tapping away at his phone, while Hinata dusts at cobwebs atop high surfaces. “Yes?”

“Sorry, just. I haven’t seen one in a while.”

Hinata can feel the other staring missiles into his back, and so he breathes deeply, trying to ignore it, swiping the duster across the top of the wooden desk. “... Oh.” Komaeda says after a while. “Ahaha, it  _ is _ pretty old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

Sometimes Hinata wonders why it is that Komaeda has to leave a wide breadth of silence between every new thing he says. Other times, he wonders why he even bothers to question it. Lately he’s been fond of the opinion that just as there are freak train accidents, there are weird happenings within people, too. 

He’s probably overthinking it, though. 

“It’s just easier to remember how many presses of the keys it takes to get certain characters.” Komaeda goes on, and Hinata decides it’s safe to turn around, now. When he does, he hears the sound of the phone snapping shut. 

“... I guess that’s true.” Hinata says. His feet dig into the carpet as he walks to the next surface, and Komaeda offers the room a quaint smile. 

_ Right. So he  _ does  _ talk to people other than Nanami and I. Noted.  _

At least, that’s what Hinata assumes he had been doing. Texting, that is. He’s not really sure much else can be done on a phone like that. 

 

*

 

_ “Sorry, but I have to extend the trip another week or two.” _

Hinata doesn’t bother asking why. He just huffs at the screen of his- not flip- phone, before setting it aside and going back to sleep.

Though, later on that afternoon he’ll wonder why Nanami had texted him that at four in the morning. 

 

*

 

He’s not sure what to do when a few days later, he’s left standing at Komaeda’s door for about half an hour with no answer to his knocking. Actually, he’s holding drinks, so he had been knocking with his elbow. Regardless, he’s as worried and confused as anyone would be, as Komaeda had been the one to send him out for tea in the first place the day before. 

At first he had wondered why, since Komaeda  _ surely _ had tea in his house, because everyone does, but then he realized that the other boy probably never had company over. It’s sort of odd, but he supposes that he just gets that kind of vibe from him. Perhaps it’s due to the eccentricities he’s been exposed to for a few weeks now- just the other day Komaeda had made him flip through all of the channels on the TV while he sat, doing nothing but staring into space. Shortly after, he had choked violently on a single grain of rice and then complained about it being too early in the morning for such a thing.

Basically, Hinata’s thought process had done a flying leap from  _ yeah, it’s no wonder he doesn’t have any tea,  _ to  _ wait but he’s not answering the door did he die some horrible bizarre death is his leg caught in the ceiling fan or something--  _

And he knocks with his elbow again, but no answer. 

In the hallway of an apartment complex that smells of hand lotion and mold, he glares into the wood grains of the door, waiting, thinking, before huffing and rather forcefully setting their drinks down on the bare carpet and knocking with his hand, like a normal person.

“Komaeda?” he calls, admittedly kind of quiet because he  _ is  _ technically still in public, and leans his ear in close to the door. 

Approximately three minutes of silence pass. Down the hall, someone leaves their apartment, and so Hinata leans away from the door, looking at the corner of the wall and pretending to be inconspicuous. Once they’re gone, he whips his phone from his pocket, tapping toward Nanami’s contact and inflating his cheeks in both a worried and exasperated gesture. 

‘Does Komaeda ever leave in the middle of your shift?’ he types, sliding his thumb downward and pressing twice on the send button, just for measure. 

Of course, it’s on this particular day that Nanami decides not to answer right away. 

Two minutes. Three. Five. Eight. Thirteen. Hinata unlocks his phone again. 

‘Nanami.’

Seventeen. Twenty-three. Another thirty, and then--

_ ‘No, why?’ _

He breathes a sigh of relief, his fingers already sliding across the keyboard. There’s got to be some weird explanation like, oh, he attends therapeutic book club on Tuesdays or something. Right. ‘He won’t answer the door.’

The reply doesn’t even take a second. 

_ ‘Then something’s wrong. He doesn’t leave the house. Go in.’  _

Hinata’s heart does a flying leap into his throat and he looks back up at the door. Its brass numbers show him a warped reflection of his own face. ‘How??’ he looks back down half through the text to send it, before staring ahead at the door again. 

Seconds tick by like sparks to a vat of oil.

_ ‘The door’s always unlocked.’  _

Kind of like a tiny lightbulb, the thought flies through Hinata’s head that that is  _ definitely _ not safe, but he barely regards it for a moment before it’s gone and he’s inside the apartment face to face with a familiar, nice, framed picture of a golden retriever. “Komaeda?” he calls right away, feeling the air of the apartment settle over him like a blanket afterward. It occurs to him then that he’s just walked into someone’s house without their permission, but he swallows that tidbit of information, because this is an emergency, right? Yeah, this is what an emergency feels like.

He’s never felt one before, and right then he decides that he doesn’t like it. It’s not at all like it’s described in fiction; there’s no panicked breathing and running around the apartment checking every nook and cranny, only the hesitant steps into the living room and the wringing of his hands together, his body trying to move beneath the weight of his thoughts.

“Komaeda?” he tries again, and nothing answers him but a slight shuffle coming from the bedroom. 

In but a moment his feet carry him toward the noise, and he thinks to himself that, actually, it kind of is like it is in fiction, and he slides on the floor near the doorway, peering into the room, heart pounding, expecting to find the other boy dead or dying or both even though that doesn’t make sense and-

“Yes hello, Hinata-kun.” comes the extremely,  _ extremely  _ muffled voice of Komaeda.

“... Komaeda?”

“Mm-hm.”

Hinata relaxes all of the muscles in his body that had been tense, and he leans against the doorway, catching the breath he hadn’t realized he had lost. “What are you  _ doing?”  _ he asks, just, just  _ confused,  _ as all he can see of Komaeda is his bottom half, lying face down atop a disheveled bed. His head, shoulders, and, well, pretty much his entire torso are lost somewhere in between the mattress (which has slid a notable amount across the room) and the headboard. 

“I seem to have dropped my phone down this way during the night and I was trying to get it back, but… I fell, and I’m stuck.”

“I see.”

“Yes.”

The air is then punctuated by a loud, deep groaning sound. 

“Wait, so. You’ve been stuck there all day?” 

“Yes.”

“Was that your stomach growling just now?”

“Yes.”

And Hinata notices right at that moment that Komaeda is wearing mismatched socks. Something kind of bubbles up beneath his ribcage, and as he stares at Komaeda in such a ridiculous situation, the other boy kicks his legs in such a small, pathetic way, that the thing building in Hinata’s chest bursts out of his mouth in the form of a nonplussed laugh. “What the  _ hell?”  _ he manages in between his cackles, stepping farther into the room and toward Komaeda-- it’s so uncomfortable but  _ hilarious  _ to talk to someone when all you can see are their legs and their  _ stupid socks.  _ “What should I do?” he asks with finality.

“Oh, it’s alright, Hinata-kun. I’ll find my way out of this.”

“The hell you will.” and his words are punctuated by another rumbling growl of Komaeda’s stomach. “Here, I’ll grab your legs.” he says, pinching his mouth shut and stifling his laughter. One of his eyes kind of twitches in the effort to do so, and he ends up snorting loudly in the back of his throat. Evidently Komaeda pays the other’s amusement no mind, for he continues to blabber on even as Hinata already has hold of his ankles and his pulling him out of his ridiculous predicament. 

“Really, Hinata-kun. I think I’ve almost found my way out, actually- you can have the day off, I’ll be fiiiii--” his words fade away as his face drags against the mattress, and next his arms. 

Hinata stands straight again, smiling kind of stupidly. 

“Thank you, Hinata-kun.”

 

*

 

‘He’s fine.’

Hinata locks his phone and shoves it back in his pocket. He sits idly next to Komaeda as the other feebly picks at a bowl of fried rice and stares at the floor, red up to his ears. 

“Really, it’s not a big deal.” Hinata tries for the fourth time, and his phone vibrates in his pocket a moment later. 

He decides that he’ll look at it later. 

“... No, I’m so mortified that you had to see something so unsightly, Hinata-kun. I’m really sorry, I’ll make sure to add compensation to your payment, and…” Komaeda stops talking, complexion flaring up again as he appears to stare into the rice as though it’s personally offended him. 

“I’m not even bothered. If anything, that made my day a bit better, honestly.”

“That’s not possible, Hinata-kun. To have to get someone as pathetic as me out of such a pathetic situation, you can’t possibly be fine with that.”

“Not sure why you’re saying you’re pathetic, but I’m being honest.”

“...  _ Ugh,  _ you’re so strange, Hinata-kun.”

Hinata thinks that it’s been a long while since he’s laughed twice in one day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _( : J L)_


	4. The Routine

_ “It’s him.”  _ Hinata whispers to himself, before he even realizes he had done so. Naegi looks up from his phone, blinking big eyes and lifting his brows.

“What?”

“Uh…” Hinata flounders, bunching up his shoulders. It had just slipped out of his mouth- as though he were making a remark to himself about the weather. He had just met Naegi, so he doesn’t really want to say,  _ yeah, there’s this weird guy who tries to tell people’s fortunes behind the pizza place my friend and I go to, and he’s right there, holy shit,  _ because that seems like a farfetched thing to tell someone you just met. Naegi just stares at him, before following his gaze toward the entrance of the train. Oddly enough, he seems to light up in recognition. 

“Oh, it’s Hagakure!” 

Hinata blinks. “What?”

“That’s Hagakure. He’s in my class.”

_ “Your cla--”  _

“Naegicchi!”

Naegi waves his hand a little too high for it to be normal, but when faced with the enthusiasm of the- kid? man? running toward them, Hinata thinks that such exaggerated waving fits the atmosphere.  _ He’s in my class,  _ Naegi had said, but looking at the guy in front of them, he’d never guess he was still in high school. The only indication of such a fact is the high school jacket thrown haphazardly over his shoulders, but even that can be seen as a bizarre fashion statement, when coupled with his… big hair. 

“Hagakure, you didn’t go to Occult Club?”

_ “I told you,  _ man, it’s not occult. It’s fortune-telling, plain and simple!”

“Right, sorry. But why didn’t you go?”

“I got a returning customer, can you believe it? Some dude’s been paying me to read his love fortune!”

Hinata finds himself inadvertently listening to the conversation, and without willing himself to he starts to lean away from Naegi and the loudspoken guy, partly because he’s uncomfortable with the way the guy even  _ smells  _ like the alley behind the pizza place, and partly because he doesn’t want to seem like he knows these people. 

Though, lately, the universe hasn’t been on his side. 

“Whoa, Naegi, since when have you had a  _ twin?”  _

Without thinking Hinata leans even farther away from the two of them, before he bumps into a stranger and realizes that he’s stuck where he is, sandwiched between two people on the train. He huffs out a quiet apology, staring at the odd stains on the train’s floor.

“What?” Naegi says, and then the smelly fortune guy is in Hinata’s face. He reels back, nearly bumping his head on the back of the seat. 

“This guy looks just like you. You didn’t notice?” the guy says. Hagakure was his name, Hinata thinks, as he prepares for an awkward conversation. 

“Oh! Haha, this is Hinata. We were in a train crash together.” Naegi says, directing the conversation away from him. Hagakure looks back to his classmate, and Hinata feels a heavy dread fly away from its perch atop his shoulders. 

“What? A train crash? You mean  _ the  _ train crash? The one I predicted?”

“I guess you did, didn’t you?”

Staring at his feet, Hinata thinks to himself that he owes Naegi more credit. It could have been coincidence, but Hinata thinks that the boy had somehow sensed he was uncomfortable, and pulled the topic elsewhere. Really, he just seems like that kind of person. Kind, in any circumstance. Hinata sort of thinks that there should be more people like that.

 

*

 

_ 'Dude, I'm gonna get a date!!!’ _

Hinata looks at his phone distastefully for a while, accompanied by the sound of Komaeda typing away at his laptop. It's a rather strong tapping sound, next to the constant ticking of the apartment’s wall clock. He looks away from his phone. Lately, when he's left to his own devices inside Komaeda’s apartment, he finds himself staring at the framed photo of the golden retriever in the other's living room. 

The dog is smiling, it's tongue hanging out the side of its mouth. It's a cloudy day in the picture, and in the background, there's nothing but a white, picket fence. For a while, he stares, and after another while he starts to question why the picture is there.

His phone vibrates again. 

_ 'Hinata!!!!!!!!’ _

The dog has warm, brown eyes, too. Personally, Hinata has never found brown eyes all that exciting. Some people claim that he, himself, has brown eyes, but personally, he's not sure his own eyes can be described as just one color. Really, they're just muddy. 

_ 'Hinata, I can see that you're reading these.’ _

Is it Komaeda’s dog? Hinata blinks, his eyes heading over to the other boy. He can't see what he's typing, but he can see that his shoulders are moving just slightly as he does.  For some reason, Hinata doesn't think that Komaeda seems like much of a dog person.

_ 'Dude, you're killing me.’ _

Not a cat person either, though. He's got that fluffy hair that goes everywhere. Hinata doesn't think he can imagine this apartment with an animal shedding everywhere, too.

_ ‘2:30. The park with the crepes. Be there or I'll tell Nanami about the swimsuits.’ _

Hinata finally sighs, opening the text window. 

_ 'I can't. I'm working.’ _

Though, is he working? He glances at the back of Komaeda’s head. Is this working? All he's doing is sitting here. Sometimes, Komaeda asks him to just stay around... and he doesn't really mind, but, is that even working?

_ ‘Again? What are you now, a brain surgeon?’ _

He doesn't think he even wants to respond to that. Luckily, he doesn't have to.

_ ‘5:30?’ _

He sighs, before he can stop himself.  _ ‘Fine.’ _

“Is something wrong?” 

Hinata turns, but finds that Komaeda has not looked away from the computer. “No. Just my friend being weird.”

“Hmm…” Komaeda hums, before he's typing again.

That's another thing. Hinata can't really grasp any words to describe Komaeda, either. He's not nosy, or at least, Hinata doesn't think so, but just from that hum he can tell that he's curious. He's been nice enough so far, but at the same time, he's so odd that Hinata can't bring himself to call him 'kind’. Sort of like, a kind person will go out of their way not to make trouble, whereas Komaeda will often make Hinata do peculiar things, like fix his shower (which he could have just called a plumber for), or stand around and observe him as he cleans his kitchen (which he very well could have done himself). 

Suddenly, Komaeda stops typing, and his head tilts from side to side, as though he's trying to crack the joints in his neck. “Are you staring at me?”

Hinata blinks. “Huh?” 

“It feels like… you're staring at me.” 

He realizes then that, he had, indeed, been absentmindedly staring. He's not really sure why. In the end, he thinks to himself, it's because Komaeda is just so weird.

"Sorry.”

 

*

 

“She already rejected you. Why are you bothering her again?” Hinata is standing in the middle of the pavement, his hands on his hips as he peers down at Souda… hiding behind a bush. “And why are you acting so weird? You’re not exactly presenting yourself well right now.”

“Dude, I had an epiphany.” Souda says from behind the bush. Hinata lifts one eyebrow as his friend peeks above a wall of shrubbery, staring in the direction of a familiar crepe truck. 

“Okay?”

Souda pauses, before he hits his left palm with right fist, turns to Hinata with alien swiftness, and stands, grabbing him by his wrists. “Hinata, man, you’re my best friend.”

Hinata blinks, affronted. He glances around, wondering if people are staring at them. It looks like he's being proposed to. “Okay…?”

“I’m your best friend, too, right?”

“I guess.” he finally says, not thinking. Souda glares daggers into him, and Hinata kind of swallows, before muttering under his breath, “Though I’m not really sure why…”

Either Souda doesn’t hear him (which is unlikely), or he decidedly ignores that quiet remark, for immediately after, he lets go of Hinata and crouches behind the bush again. Leaves fly in every direction when he does so. “Good. Then, I need you to go buy a crepe.”

“What? Why? You already bought one the other day.”

“Because I need to know her name! I didn’t catch it at the time, I was too absorbed in her eyes!” Souda gripes, grabbing fistfuls of the bush. He smiles dreamily in the direction of the truck, and sighs. 

Hinata narrows his eyes. He feels like he’s fallen into an ancient comic strip. “How can you even say stuff like that without barfing?”

“Whatever, man. I’m not a robot like you. Just go buy a crepe! I dunno about you, but I’m always up for crepes!”

For a few seconds he stands, a bit offended by the robot remark, before he kicks the sole of Souda’s shoe, biting the inside of his cheek. “Then go buy one yourself, if you’re so into crepes. This is a waste of time…” he huffs, before turning and starting to walk away. However, there’s a small grip on the\ hem of his shirt, and he sighs, turning around. Souda looks up at him pleadingly, probably trying to look like a small, pitiful animal in doing so, but only managing to look like a vaguely disgruntled shark. 

“Please? I’ll owe you one.”

For the longest time, Hinata just stares, before he folds his arms and peers down his nose at Souda. The pink-haired boy retracts his hand, scratching his cheek and appearing sheepish. Hinata sighs, and holds out his hand. He doesn’t get many friends, and he figures, he might be able to live with being a bit more lenient toward the ones he has.

“Fine. Give me the money.”

Souda lights up, his grin splitting his face to his ears, before he halts his mirth and his expression seems to crack in realization. He looks down at his shoes. “I don’t have any money.”

“God damn it, Souda.”

 

*

 

Isn’t Nanami his best friend? 

Hinata contemplates this as he waits in line under the pounding, afternoon sun. While he had concluded that he should perhaps be more lenient, he also thinks, crossly, that he should perhaps not allow himself to be manipulated so easily. He's always been weak to words like  _friendship,_ since they're so seldom.

That, or Souda really considers him his best friend, which would actually… be kind of sad. Hinata thinks that if he assumes this to be the case, he might try to treat the pink-haired boy with less disdain, despite how ridiculous he can be. 

The line advances. Right, the line, almost entirely composed of small children. Hinata feels a little odd standing in such a line, but, it has to just be coincidence. Right? It’s normal to buy desserts when you’re an adult, right? Granted, he is only  _ barely  _ an adult, so maybe he can still pass as part of the crowd… no, wait, these are all toddlers.  _ Right.  _

Question marks soar through his brain like tumbleweeds, and before he realizes it, he’s reached the window. 

“How can I help you?” says a… a  _ male  _ voice. He looks up, not realizing he had looked down, only to be met with the reddish face of an  _ extremely _ short… boy, man… person. Blinking, Hinata then tries with his best subtlety to peer around the rest of the truck, only to find no sign of the blonde from before. 

“Uh- doesn’t a… never mind.”

The small  _ boy,  _ let’s say, quirks an eyebrow, which looks out of place beneath his immaculately coiffed hairstyle, and above his alarmingly tiny eyeballs. “Hm?”

Hinata glances at the menu. “I’ll take an… orange cream.” While he’s at it, he glances at the boy’s name tag. He doesn’t have a reason to, really. At this point, he’s looking everywhere except directly in front of him. He feels awkward, standing in a line of children, getting stared down by Souda from behind a bush, and scouting the area for a pretty blond girl. He thinks that perhaps he should have just left upon finding the girl not to be there, but in the end, he decides, a crepe does sound pretty good at the moment. 

_ “Heavy  _ _cream_  with that?”

“What?” he blinks. The tiny boy behind the counter is looking at him with an odd, almost lecherous expression. A chill travels down his spine, which is weird, since it's actually pretty warm out today. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” Hinata decides, looking at his shoes and stepping a bit back. Something about this guy is, well, frightening. Souda had been right about owing him one.

*

 

“So, what was her name? I bet it was something really pretty.”

The cream, at least, is quite heavy and quite sweet. To some degree, Hinata feels lucky. It’s not often that crepes come with oranges. Usually it's bananas, or strawberries, or even chocolate... He thinks he feels leftover cream on his chin, and so he wipes at it with his free wrist. 

Shutting his eyes, he replies, remembering the tiny guy behind the counter, “Hanamura.” 

Actually, the cream is kind of sickly sweet and a bit too rich. Part of Hinata feels like an asshole for lying to his friend, and another part is laughing its ass off. 

“Ooh.” Souda says, and at the end of it he kind of whistles. “ _Hana_ mura. Like flowers.”

Hinata picks an orange slice out of the crepe and tosses it into his mouth. He tries to conceal his amused grin within the act of chewing, but in the end he has to look the other way. Luckily, Souda is too distracted by his own musings. 

“Flowers…” he murmurs, and Hinata hears a gasp. He turns to Souda, then, forcing his smile into a crooked, neutral line. “I know! I should get her flowers… right now! I should go get her flowers! I’m gonna tell her she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen!”

By no means, is Hinata cruel. He opens his mouth straight away to say something like,  _ I was kidding, Souda, she wasn’t there, that was the name of the other guy, and he's really creepy,  _ but before the words even leave his mouth, his friend is gone, sprinting away from the park and toward the convenience store across the street. Luckily there hadn't been any traffic, but Hinata thinks that if there had been, Souda wouldn't have waited for it. A grimace grows rampant upon his face, and he hides his mouth behind the crepe as though it's a security blanket. Do convenience stores even  _ have  _ flowers…? Hopefully they don’t, because in that case, Hinata will have more time to escape. Ah, hold on. Souda doesn’t have any money on him. Yeah, Hinata has all the time in the world to run. He settles down on the bench, tearing off a piece of the crepe itself and dipping it into some saccharine cream. 

Souda  _had_ said he owed him one...

 

*

 

_ ‘I hate you.’  _ is the message he receives from Souda later that evening, quite a while after he had left the scene. He smiles at it for one second, and cringes the next. Maybe he shouldn’t have done that, but in the end, it had been entertaining. 

The sun is breaking in half over the horizon, and the sky is a blend of periwinkle and pale yellow. It’s the time of day that the air is at its hottest, and of course he had spent all of his pocket change on a crepe, and so he can’t afford a ride to where he's going. He pats his leg, ensuring that the key Komaeda had given him is there. It is, and so he looks to the sky again, for lack of better to do.

Though, walking can be nice, sometimes. It’s relaxing to stake out the scenery, to some extent. Not quite entertaining, but almost mind-numbing. It's not really that there's a lack of things to do, rather, the brain focuses on carrying one to their destination.

But, this particular walk isn't as peaceful as it ought to be. He approaches Komaeda's apartment building, and near the entrance is a girl with dark, unkempt hair tapping incessantly at the buzzer. At first Hinata means to just pass by, because what is  _he_ supposed to do about it, before he realizes that the girl has tears streaming down her face. 

He stops in his tracks before realizing he had done so due to the shocking sight, and after the awkward span of time it took for her to realize he was there, the girl turns to him, lip quivering. "Y-yes?"

"Uh." he tries. The girl sniffles, although it sounds a bit more like a  _snooork_ than a sniffle, and she wipes her tears feverishly with her wrists.

They stare at each other for a while, because Hinata has no idea what to say to a crying girl, and... she's  _kind of_ in the way. And so he just stands, face a blank slate as this girl gets ahold of herself. 

"U-u-um, I..." she looks up at him, and immediately looks down again upon meeting his eyes. Her feet tap around in a sort of nervous little dance, before she takes a deep breath, clenches both fists, looks up, and says, "I'm sorry for getting in your way!" before she sprints away, turning a corner away from Hinata's sight within seconds. 

 

*

 

“Are you sure you had no trouble getting here?” 

For about the fifth time this hour, Hinata nods. Komaeda fidgets, then, just as he has every other time he's asked this same question. He fidgets and faces the floor, faces anywhere but Hinata, really, and furrows his eyebrows.

“I really am sure…” Hinata replies. It is, he finds, rather uncomfortable to be shown concern when he's doing chores, especially when said concern is being given by the guy who gave him such chores. The frown on Komaeda's face seems to be rather stubborn.

“But why do you keep asking?” HInata asks, only mildly concerned.

“Well, it's just that I had you come later today. Bad things can happen when it starts to get dark…” 

Hinata considers this, pausing in his sweeping. Then, he blinks and continues. 

“I can take care of myself.” he says. 

To that Komaeda says nothing. Hinata sweeps in silence, almost doing so to the rhythm of the ticking wall clock. He furrows his eyebrows, out of habit, before he hears Komaeda leave to the other room. 

Probably going to type away at his laptop again. 

There’s something about sweeping with a pushbroom that’s oddly relaxing. The same doesn’t apply to a standard broom, he thinks, because of the odd angle one must use to hold it. Sweeping with a standard broom is like sweeping behind your own back, Hinata thinks. It’s a weird, pointless thought, but nonetheless it’s there, and he has all of the kitchen’s dust gathered into a neat, tiny rectangle. 

He wonders why Komaeda had asked him to sweep, when the place is hardly dirty in the first place. Maybe he’s just a tidy person.

Hinata sets about sweeping the scarce bits of dust into the dustpan, and dumping it in the trash. 

“Hinata-kun? Are you done?”

The broom and dustpan are set against the wall with a tiny clatter, and Hinata makes his way into the other room with barely a creak beneath his feet. He finds Komaeda to not be typing on his laptop. Instead, he’s sitting with his feet up on the couch, staring into space and biting his lip. 

“I just finished, actually.” Hinata says. He thinks about sitting down too, but decides not to when Komaeda doesn’t look at him, but instead the wall behind him, quite obviously. 

“I thought so, I heard you put the things down.” he says. His eyes shut, then, in an overly cheerful smile that’s starting to become familiar. He opens his eyes again, and Hinata watches his gaze trace to the carpet. “But, um, tomorrow, could you come later again? I’m sorry to keep imposing it on you...”

“Sure.” Hinata shrugs. He doesn’t give the reasons why much thought. Instead, he’s stuck on why on earth Komaeda would consider such a thing ‘imposing’. “It’s no problem. I’ll be able to sleep in.” 

“I’m glad.” Komaeda says with another smile, though this one is a tad more measured. Then, his expression sours. “But, Hinata-kun shouldn’t get  _ too  _ much sleep. That’s not healthy.”

“I got it.” he nods, stepping farther into the room and kicking one foot with the other. “So, same time tomorrow?”

“Actually, maybe an hour later.” 

Hinata blinks. “Did I come too early today?” 

Komaeda sticks his hands up, as though asking for mercy. Hinata tries not to give him a weird look. “Oh, no. Sorry. It’s just that, I’ve got company tomorrow, and they’re going to be staying later than they did today…”

Managing to withhold any sort of reaction, Hinata leaves soon after, although he is mildly, but unimportantly surprised. Komaeda doesn’t seem like the kind of person to have ‘company’ over.

It’s kind of like expecting someone’s favorite food to be sweets, but instead having it be something bitter. He doesn’t really care, he just… hadn’t expected it.

 

*

 

_ ‘It’s probably Tsumiki-san.’ _

Nanami is as vague as always, Hinata thinks as he stares at three slices of day-old pizza spin around in the microwave. He doesn’t really care enough to ask who Tsumiki is, exactly, and so he stares at the pizza for about five more revolutions before his phone buzzes again. 

_ ‘Why didn’t you just ask him?’  _

The pizza spins again, although thanks to Hinata’s imagination, it goes a bit slower this time. 

That’s a good question. 

The reason why is really pretty easy, though he can’t find the right words to formulate an accurate answer. It’s something about the way Komaeda acts. How he always acts a little strange… Hinata gets the feeling that most people sense the need to not get involved with him. Like it’d be too much added onto their plate, worrying about whatever problems Komaeda has. 

Something to make someone a little weird... it's bound to be extreme, or perhaps just outlandish. Though, that in itself is a little interesting. 

In the end, he frowns, opening the microwave. He stares at the screen of his phone, before sending Nanami a vague,  _ ‘I don’t know. I will tomorrow.’  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Souda was Hagakure's repeating customer.

**Author's Note:**

> hi i'm hinata hajime and welcome to jackass *punches helicopter*


End file.
